ramtops

My mobile rang yesterday evening. Is that Lilith’s mum? asked a woman’s voice. My heart lurched.

Despite it being biologically impossible, I admitted that I was, yes, and thinking Dear lord – what now? This kind woman, appropriately named Cat, had found Lilith’s missing collar tags* in her back yard. They went missing a few weeks ago, and I hadn’t actually got round to getting her another set. Cat lives a few doors up, and said she would drop them off, but as it was in the wrong direction for where she said she was headed, I decided to walk up and meet her.

Well, well. Cat has two cats, one of whom is Lily’s great pal. Lil makes an absolute dash to get in Cat’s house, and has been seen shoving a brick nearly her own weight away from Cat’s side gate to get through to the yard.  She’s also been seen in the new development right at the top of the road, and lord knows where else. Dreadful cat, she is. Most grateful to Cat for taking the trouble to call, and for giving me info on the wanderer’s stamping ground.

When I saw bluetooth Tiles looking for funding last year, I pre-ordered four, and one of them is going *straight* on Lily’s collar.

*Yes, tags. Both double sided, one giving her name, and “I am microchipped” on the reverse, and the other saying “I have a home” and “please do not feed me”.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

Everything seems much as normal for Lilith now – her pluth is growing back, the scar has healed nicely, and she’s starting to be more … herself.  She is, occasionally, taking herself through the catflap; my heart is in my mouth, but I guess I’ll get used to it, and I wouldn’t attempt to confine her anyway.

Interestingly, since she came home, the boys have let her eat on her own; we put two bowls of food down every morning, and usually it’s just a melée, but since she’s been poorly Ron, Mustrum and Henry have gathered round one bowl, and left Lily to her own devices with the other one, only eating from it when she’d left. That changed yesterday, and Ron was troughing with her, and today too. Perhaps they sense her improvement too.

So, it’s been vile and horrible and expensive, but she is as well with it as is possible to be, I think. And better a three-legged Lily than no Lily at all. I’ve taken to calling her the ZombieCat, as she lurches about, but in truth she’s now moving pretty well. A couple of things threw her last week – a leap onto the landing bannister was a tad over-ambitious, and I thought she was going to topple over. And when she spotted the laundry basket was open, she made her usual dive for it, lost her balance on the edge and fell in.

The most disturbing thing is that she now looks exactly like Liessa, to the point where Pete and I have both found ourselves addressing her as Bada. This is scary; Liessa was already The People’s Princess reincarnated, and now she appears to have passed her Badaness on to Lilith. We are afraid.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

So, she went in the crate on Monday night. She was not pleased. She spent most of the night banging and crashing about, in a temper, as we thought. However, in the morning, the score appeared to be Lilith 1 : Cone 0. She’d managed to remove it during the hours of darkness. We looked at her, we looked at it, we thought “no, thanks”. And she is so much more comfortable without it, and doesn’t seem to be pulling at her stitches at all (and the wound looks to be healing properly), we’ve left it off.

She has a ravening appetite, but after Tuesday morning’s escapade, she’s been content to stay in the house. Most of yesterday was spent curled up on Pete’s hessian backpack, on a cool, quiet shelf in the bedroom; presumably, at some point, the pack annoyed her in some way, and she cast it to the ground. But she looked relaxed, and comfortable, and properly asleep. Apart from her Sheba morning and night, she consumed 60g of roast turkey during the afternoon (Ron and Henry obligingly finished the rest), and then she moved downstairs to sleep on the dining table when we were in the living room. She can jump a bit higher, move a little easier, every day, and I am utterly confident that she will cope, and cope well, in the future.

Considering the practicalities of stuffing a cat in her condition, with her attitude, into one of our front opening cat boxes, Pete cycled off to the vets yesterday and picked up a top loading wire basket. Astonishingly, neither Argos nor Pets at Home stock these; now we have one, they seem far nicer for most cat journeys.

We put her back in  her cage last night, not least because we are keeping the cat flap shut during the day (the boys can go though the back door and over the walls. I’m hoping she, er, won’t). But at night, they need to come and go at will, and I’m not ready to let her out the front before the stitches are out. She banged about a bit, but settled quite quickly, so that’s where she’ll be at night for a while, and during the day too if we’re out for any length of time. The cone stopped her getting through the flap, but now it’s been vanquished, we need to ensuring that she is safe. And the neighbourhood, come to that.

We also hear that the Woman Up The Road has now moved out. Thank $deity for that. Pity I couldn’t stiff her for some of the bill, though.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

There was a knock on the door this morning, and the mad old bat* from down the road was stood there. “Do you own a white cat?” she asked. Well, we did buy a cream cat, but I don’t like to say we actually own any of our cats. But that seemed a bit semantic, so I just said “Yes”, and worried that she was going to tell me that Lil was injured, or worse. Coming on top of Iggy’s disappearance (yes, he is still gone) that would be very hard to take.

Anyhoo, she has been feeding Lilith because she “thought she was a stray”. Right.  Looking it up today, it is just 10 days past two years since I had this conversation with her (see here). She’s only been going walkabout again for a few weeks, so I guess this woman forgot (to give her the benefit of the doubt). She seemed quite confused, firstly saying that Lil came in through her catflap, and then that she “let her out to have a wee”. I have asked her yet again not to feed her, and I’m going out this evening to purchase a collar. I don’t like them, and I’m not sure Lily will actually wear it, but perhaps it will remind this seemingly senile woman (no, not me) that the cream cat is not a stray, and in fact lives somewhere else. With us.

*well, she might not be , but she damn well seems like it.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

During the latter part of this morning, I could hear a cat going mew. It didn’t sound like any of ours – Mustrum gurgles and squeaks and shouts, Iggy rowls, Henry and Ron squeal. Lilith doesn’t speak much – she might say “hello” outside, but by and large she is pretty much mute indoors.

It drove me crazy – first I thought it was coming from the back of the house, but there was no cat in the yard, and nobody under the floorboards (we’re in the process of bathroom renovations). Then I thought it was coming from the front, but there were only the spotty boys out there.

This went on for about half an hour until a thought struck Pete; he’d bee putting some stuff in the loft. And where oh where was the devil cat? He opened the hatch, and out  came Lilith – slowly, making an entrance as befits her station. I had no idea she could make so much noise!

Don’t do it again, Lil.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

We were just settling down to sleep last night – indeed, I had almost drifted off – when there came an unseemly scrabbling from under the bed. For various reasons (mostly lack of space) we have a number of Things stowed under the bed, and the scrabbling indicated at least one cat doing … Something.

We switched on a light, and Pete peered underneath, to find Lilith and Henry; they do interact from time to time those two, so we hoped that was all it was, but no: a small rodent was involved too. And then Ron joined in too.

The rodent took refuge under something that the cats couldn’t extract him from, it quietened down, and I’m afraid we went back to sleep. So in a moment, Pete will have to go and see where the remains of it are …

When we lived in our North Somerset village, we used to get a lot of corpses; I was frequently heard to remark that it was like the Cambodian Killing Fields, and that Lilith had wrecked the local ecosystem. But they don’t catch much here – too urban, and too much feline competition. So I suppose we should say “well done”, because they’re only doing what cats do.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

Lily is having a hard-ish time of it right now – Henry has been bullying her for a few months. Not constantly, but enough to make her life uncomfortable from time to time, and now Ron is starting to join in now and again.

However, Lilith is a stalwart, and takes it  pretty much all in her stride most of the time. Here you can see her being very stressed, on my desk. For some reason, I called her “mein leibling”, and it appears to be sticking.

I have had serious words with EnRon but, as you might imagine, they just ignored me (apart from a “purr” from Henry, which is his response to most things).

In other news, we picked up a cat tree this morning from our friend Samantha, who bought it at an auction for us. It has been placed in front of the living room window, but obviously nocat is going to sit on it for some time. I have seeded* it with catnip, so we shall see if that lures them. It’s quite a whizzy one, as it has not only a platform, but a rather fine tunnel, so I imagine they’ll have some fun with it when we’re not looking.

* Not literally.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

Lilith sitting on my Swiss Ball chair

Originally uploaded by ramtops

A bunch of the local children have really taken to the Tribe; they assemble outside the house to visit the cats, who spend a fair amount of time in the street because that’s where the sun falls during the day.

I went out to talk to a couple of the kids this morning, who were making a huge fuss of Lilith (who was enjoying every minute of it), and told the boys her name.

“Oh”, they said. “We call her “Angel”".

Dear lord …

Mirrored from the Tribe.

Lilith is snuffling and sneezing, and has slightly runny eyes. We’re not sure whether it’s a cold, or an allergy maybe – she’s eating, but she wants company and comfort, which is unusual for her (to put it mildly).

So I went to bed early last night with a book, and carried her upstairs with me – astonishing in itself, as she’s not keen on behing held – so that she could curl up with me. She immediately settled on my pillow, where she has been all night, and remains there still, which has meant I’ve had a dreadful night.

I hate it when one of the cats is ill, and we haven’t yet sorted out a vet here, so I will be looking into that today, just in case. I’m not one for rushing them off to see a doc, any more than I would do it for myself, but we’re mindful of the fact that cat flu took Bada from us …

As we often say, Lilith is a monster, but she’s our monster, and we’re very fond.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

We have a large bedroom here, with two tall, south facing windows, so the sun streams in there during the day (when it shines at all, of course).  We set a chair that is very like, but is not, an Ikea Poang by one of the windows – it’s a nice quiet place if one of us wants to read or listen to music. And we assumed that the Tribe would love the chair, and bask in it during the sunlit afternoons.

But no – they never went near it, not even when I put one of their cat rugs on it.

I try very hard not to dump stuff on the chair, but a few days ago I left my swimming bag on there. And the next morning, when I got up, I most definitely didn’t see Iggy and Lily on the chair. No sirree Bob. Nor, at various times, have we seen Ron on the chair, or Mustrum (curiously, Henry has really not been seen on it). Iggy and Lily are on it now, in fact – they have spent every night on there since the bag arrived.

We can only assume that they’re now using it because it’s no longer clearly *meant* for them – ornery creatures, cats.

Mirrored from the Tribe.